Suncor’s activities in the Sullivan natural gas field fall within areas of Kananaskis Country that are appropriately zoned for gas drilling and development. As the location is an environmentally sensitive area, our development is a concern for local communities. Engaging our stakeholders and listening to what they have to say is important to us. Welcome to Sullivan Field Notes.

Important Update

Please note that as of July 6, 2010, Sullivan Field Notes has officially moved into archive status. Posts are being kept for archive purposes, but it is no longer being actively updated.

About Sullivan Field Notes

Suncor’s proposed development of the Sullivan natural gas field falls within areas of Kananaskis Country that are appropriately zoned for gas drilling and development. As the location is a highly valued area, our development is a concern for local communities. Engaging our stakeholders and listening to what they have to say is important to us. Welcome to Sullivan Field Notes.

Sullivan Hearing Details

When my colleague Kyle began this blog, it was November 2008 and the company was preparing to attend an ERCB hearing on the Sullivan project. In his first blog post, Kyle noted, “discussions during the hearing will ultimately lead to a decision by the Energy Resources Conservation Board as to whether or not this development [the Sullivan project] is in the interest of all Albertans.”

In short, a lot has happened over the last year and a half. But one of Kyle’s other comments from the first post has also remained true. He wrote, “throughout this project, I’ve heard a lot of good questions from people about our plans. Since not everyone can attend the hearing, I thought I would tackle some of those questions here.”

Kyle used the blog to provide a lot of great information over the course of subsequent months. And once he changed jobs and we continued to wait for a regulatory decision, I tried my best to keep you up to date as well.

All in all, I think the blog fulfilled its original purpose.

But what’s next? As I mentioned last month, the Natural Gas business at Suncor is experiencing some change this year.

While we sort that out, I don’t think there will be much to blog about – not regularly, anyway. So…this is farewell.

We’ll continue to keep Sullivan Field Notes live for a period of time – there’s a lot of material on here and we see sense in keeping those materials accessible, as an archive.

But as for new posts and updates – if you’ll permit me to quote the belated Michael Jackson – this is it.

To both our faithful readers and to those who found us by chance (or Google!), thank you for perusing this site.

Please remember that blog or no blog, we expect to continue getting questions about the project. We’re always open to them, and will do our best to respond.

06/09/2010

Well, the time estimates in my last post were a bit off. We didn’t receive the ERCB’s decision while I was on vacation last month, and we didn’t receive summer either. Ask me how thrilled I was to get on the plane home and hear that it was snowing in Calgary on May 29!

But despite having visited the UK for part of my trip -- where the British are known for their talk about weather – I’ll put that conversation aside and get to the matter at hand.

Yesterday, the ERCB issued a conditional approval for the Sullivan project. Their news release can be found here, and the entire decision report is here.

Obviously, we’re pleased with the approval, but it’s still early days. We’re studying the conditions and we’ll see where best to go from there. In the short-term, our focus in the company’s Natural Gas business is still on streamlinining our portfolio (you may have heard that we’ve been selling some natural gas assets this year) and further developing our longer-term strategy for the business.

But if and when we move ahead on Sullivan, you can be sure we’re still committed to developing this long-life resource in a responsible way. Nothing else would be acceptable, as demonstrated by the ERCB’s 15 conditions of approval, and their reference to the 300+ commitments made by Petro-Canada (now Suncor) during the regulatory hearing.

(The ERCB’s conditions and a summary of our commitments are available via the link above to the full decision report.)